


The Kingsroad

by SoulOfSnow



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), The Road - Cormac McCarthy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-17
Updated: 2012-08-19
Packaged: 2017-11-12 08:24:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/488744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoulOfSnow/pseuds/SoulOfSnow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Combining ASOIAF and The Road in a Post-Apocalypse in which two characters from Westeros try to survive together along The Kingsroad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> READ: I have tried to write this more in the shadowing of Cormac McCarthy while combining some of GRRM. It's the first time I've tried writing in a new style so hopefully it will iron out as I continue. Enjoy!

In her dreams she was home again and the grey was as welcome as the sun and the snows fells two feet deep and they played in the snow like children might, until their skin turned blue and their fingers red. Then they ran inside and the spring-warmed walls of their ghostly haven warmed their bones and dried their hair and then her mother would brush it neat and read them stories. In her dreams nothing turned red and no one burned. In her dreams there were people smiling and smoke rising in plumes from the chimneys of the houses. In her dreams the world was alive and there was no red tear in the sky.

When she woke there was no light, but it was morning. The sun seemed to have given up trying to pierce through the dark cloud that lingered heavy and angry across the sky. Sometimes it would turn the colour of a blue bruise; mottled and fading with time, but more oft than not it was grey and nothing else. 

The fire had long since gone out leaving the blackened remnants of the firewood she'd collected the night before. The boy was still sleeping beneath two brown cloaks and one blue one; his own from a world long since vanquished. She could not bring herself to wake him even though they needed to be back on the Kingsroad before the rain fell, which it no doubt would. She was hungry and cold and she shivered beneath her thin fur cloak and coughed and coughed until her lungs were raw and and the boy woke. 

"I didn't mean to wake you."

"You didn't" the boy said and he sat up, each movement shaky and unsure "I was awake."

"Were you?"

"Yes I was."

"Okay."

"Okay."

She brushed the firewood aside and kneeled close to the boy, helping him in wrapping the three cloaks around his shoulders and tying them about his neck. She pulled on his moleskin gloves and the boy stretched his fingers until they gave way and felt more comfortable. "We have to get going before the rain comes." The boy didn't answer. 

The girl wore a pair of thick woolen breeches and a doublet that skimmed her knees and made a soft whooshing sound when she walked, and fur-lined gloves with holes in the fingers and thick leather boots she tied around her legs with lace so that they did not slip off. Her red hair trailed passed her shoulders; matted and knotty, but so incredibly beautiful to behold. Nothing in the world had colour anymore, save for the girl's auburn locks. "You're carrying the fire." the boy would say. She didn't know what that meant. 

The Kingsroad was dangerously open to the elements but if they strayed too far away and slipped off into the woods they often got lost and lost a day retracing their steps back to the road. They couldn't afford to lose pace with the boy as sickly as he was. While his belly was full he convulsed far less, but when their supplies ran dry his seizures became so frequent and violent the girl feared he would die.

At midday they sat by the side of the Kingsroad and ate the last of their beets. The boy only carried a few things with him now; a toy horse with a flowing black mane and a pair of shoes should his own become too small and uncomfortable. He struggled to maintain pace with the girl if he carried too much, and so it fell to her to hold their spare cloaks and food and anything they found useful in the abandoned houses in the desolate villages. Pieces of cloth to cover their mouths from the ash and debris, thread to fix the holes in their clothes, a dagger with a rusted hilt. 

"Are you going to kill someone with that?" The boy asked.

"I might have to, yes."

"But only the bad men."

"Yes, only the bad men."

"We're not bad are we Sansa?"

"No, sweetrobin. We're not bad at all."


	2. 2

The following night they had nothing to eat and their fire was struggling to stay alive as clouds of ash bore down on them so heavily the girl could not see beyond the boy sat shaking on the other side of the fire. He was sobbing and sniveling and finally he told her he'd wet himself. The girl sat and watched and listened to her stomach screaming but she did not move to help the boy. 

There was no moonlight. Had there ever been moonlight? What did that look like and did it dance as the sun once did along the rippling ocean waves? Did it cascade in sheets of milky white or did it flash across the sky like lightening? She had forgotten all of this, and her mother's name. 

When the boy fell asleep the girl soaked his breeches in the last of the water they had in a jar she'd been carrying since they last found a stream. They smelled bad but there was little that could be done about that, and she pinned them with sticks beside the fire and watched them dry until she blinked and it was morning and the boy was sobbing again. 

"Why are you crying?"

"I called you but you didn't wake up."

"I'm sorry," she said "I was so tired."

"I'm cold."

"Here," the girl sat up sleepily and pulled back her cloak and picked up the boy's damp breeches and helped him slip them on. He had soiled his smallclothes months ago and no amount of washing had made them wearable and so he went without. 

They walked for about five miles when they stumbled on an abandoned farmhouse by the side of the Kingsroad, shrouded by a cloak of ash that twisted and twirled and in the soft light of day stars twinkled and the house was beautiful. Grass as tall as the boy surrounding it. It was built with stone and the roof was some sort of dark wood and had fallen in. The girl stood watching, waiting. Nothing moved. The boy pulled on the fur shoulder pelt of her cloak. 

"I think we should keep moving, Sansa."

"We have to take a look."

"No we don't."

"There might be food in there."

"Or people."

"There aren't any people."

"Bad people."

"The roof has collapsed. No one would want to stay in the house. There would be no shelter." The girl took the boy's hand and he tucked his shoes and wooden horse under his arm. His fingers were so thin she thought they might snap in her palm and turn to dust. _We are becomming as the dust is falling so alike we might be specks on the horizon and dance in the wind._ There was a time when she danced. Now she was dead.

"Are you afraid?" The boy asked after they had ceased to move for some time.

"A little."

"A lot?"

"Maybe."

"Okay."

The girl took took the dagger from the scabbard on her hip and held it in her free hand. The boy was shaking a little and she could feel the convulsions reaching his fingertips. Together they walked through the grass and the boy watched his feet and dodged rocks as the girl had taught him so that his shoes would not catch on the sharp edges and tear. The girl pointed the dagger at the door that was slightly ajar. She pushed it open more with the blade and ash scattered like a body slumped against the frame out and across their feet. The boy shook even more. 

"Be very quiet." she whispered, and the boy nodded mutely. The ceiling was a birdless sky and she remembered birds fondly. Now there were none and she had forgotten what they sounded like, and what her brother looked like. Rain clouds and dust clouds were much the same and she could not decipher how close the rain was, but it was coming. It was always coming. They stepped inside as though the ghost of the wooden roof might provide some protection. It was cold. 

There were only three rooms and the doors were gone so there was really only one. One could not be reached as it housed much of the wooden slats that should have covered them. Dark wood and a layer of thick black soot. The girl commenced coughing and the boy sobbed until she stopped. 

"I'm sorry I didn't mean to scare you."

"You didn't. This house does. Can we leave now?"

"Not yet."

"I'm scared."

"Me too." she said, and the boy saw she was very scared and almost crying. _Be brave, like a queen. Queen of dust and bitter longings; that's what I have become._ In the other two rooms they found a vile of clear liquid, and the boy thought it was water, but it wasn't. It was a poison she remembered from a world since destroyed, and they smashed the vile and the liquid seeped into the soiled rushes along the floor. They found apples as brown as her hair had once been, and the boy wrapped them in one of his cloaks and carried them, though he struggled after the first four and the girl carried the rest. 

They left the house and headed back to the Kingsroad, but first the boy turned and moved the door so that it was slightly ajar again, and with the side of his foot he pushed some of the ash back through the doorway. 

"No one will know we have been." he said. The girl said nothing. They walked until the rain came and then sat in the middle of the road and ate their rotten apples. The skin was gone but the core remained. When they bit into them, yellow liquid seeped down the corner of the boy's mouth and the girl coughed until she cried. Then they sat and watched the rain pummel the ash and dimple the grey with black spots. 

"We should plant these seeds and then we will always have apples to eat." The boy said.

"And when we move from here, how will we take the apple trees with us?"

The boy sat motionless for a while and then he shuddered and looked down at his hands where he held the apple pips. "I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking."

"Don't be sorry, it was a very good idea and I'm very proud of you for being so thoughtful."

"I don't want to starve to death Sansa, I don't want to."

"We won't starve to death."

"But we will die."

"Not today." The girl said, and she realised she had forgotten the colour of her sister's eyes.

"Not today."

"No."

"Okay."

After a while they laid down under a canopy of leafless trees and their cloaks were so sodden they clung to them like cocoons. After a while the girl said. "I wish we could plant apple trees, too." But the boy was asleep.


	3. 3

She wasn't sure how long he'd been following them. Days perhaps. At night, the boy would convulse so violently that after a few hours her arms would ache from holding him. She couldn't sleep until he stopped and more often than not he did not. He would wake in between fits in a cold sweat calling to a woman with auburn hair and cold blue eyes. The fire had gone out and the girl was a shadow and the boy would sob while she held him and in his weakness he could only pull away an inch or so. 

"Maybe he's hungry?" The boy asked when at last they stopped atop a hill that was not a hill but a mound of debris covered in ash and moss pulled up from the great winds. 

"He has a sack of food in his hands."

"How do you know?"

"Because I can see."

"No you can't."

"Yes I can."

"Okay." They carried on walking but kept slightly off the Kingsroad and at a slower pace; she hoped the stranger would pass them without harming them. The boy plodded on behind her and she could hear him talking to his toy horse and when they stopped to rest he would run the horse through the dirt as though it was galloping. She had loved horses but now she was dead and they were dead and her father was dead too.

"You don't believe me, do you?" The girl asked as they sat around a small fire off the Kingsroad and filled themselves up on rain water. The boy was bloated and swollen around his belly and when she held him at night it would rumble and move like the water was alive. 

"I do."

"You think that stranger needs food."

"Yes."

"We haven't got any to give him."

"I know."

"He has food in that sack. He carries it close and with delicacy. He has food."

"Okay."

"I promise."

"But you don't know for certain."

"I promise. If we find him he will only want trouble."

"You can't know for certain."

"We've never met anyone nice on the road. He's not a nice person and he will hurt us."

"Maybe he wants to eat us."

The girl frowned and the boy shivvered. "Don't say things like that."

"Okay."

In the morning and after the girl had finished coughing they made their way back onto the road. The stranger was ahead of them now and was stood watching them approach. The boy held back, cradling his horse like a newborn babe and muttering to himself. The girl stood and lifted her weary head and pushed the hair from her eyes and sighed. 

"We should go back, Sansa."

"We can't go back. If we go back we are lost."

"You said he will be trouble."

"He will be. But we have nothing to give him."

"He might e--..."

"Don't say that. Come on." They carried on walking. The stranger was a man hooded in a brown roughspun cloak and bits of armour clung to him like the dreams of a child's imagination. _Think of nothing good and the world will not seem so bad._ The girl took the boy's arm and held him close and she walked until the stranger towered over her and the boy sobbed. She could not see his face, but he smelled of a liquid she'd drink with a woman with golden hair. Permit me to share some wisdom with you, she had said. No wisdom could prepare her for the end of life. But she was dead now and words swung like hanged men in the smog and soft wind.

They had met people on the Kingsroad before and walked passed them silently. Some had tried to touch her and others would reach for the boy but most were as harmless as clean air. What did that taste like? This time as she took the boy and swept up where the road lifted and angled the stranger stepped in front of her. 

"Have you got food?" He asked and his voice was so harsh it hurt to hear him. The boy shook his head and clung to his shoes as though they were two loaves of black bread. 

"No."

"What have you got then?"

"Nothing."

The stranger, hooded and shadowed, tilted his head. "And yet you live."

"As do you."

"No," the stranger said "I don't." Trees creaked and cracked and threatened to fall and the stranger did not move and the girl and the boy did. She looked towards the sky for plumes of ash that would suggest where the trees were and she would see leaves on the wind and the boy sobbed and pulled on her breeches and shook. She knelt beside him and held him and rocked him gently. The stranger watched. 

No deals were made. And yet they walked side-by-side. The stranger on one side of the Kingsroad and the girl with the boy on the other. Between them was ash and dust and cold. That lay ahead of them too. And behind them. And in their dreams and their thoughts and their memories. It would line their coffins and fill their nostrils and settle on their lungs. The girl coughed and coughed until she fell onto her hands and knees. The stranger hoisted her up and shoved her away as though she were impossibly hot to the touch. 

"Ahead." He said. The girl looked. A building. It was familiar but as strange as warmth and she was curious as to how she knew what it was. It was as though her mind was back in a place where life lived and knew what a Sept was and could recall the seven-pointed star. Glass windows smashed and blood on the panes. Shards buried deep beneath the grey. The stranger trudged on and with his boot he wedged the door open and disappeared inside. The girl moved to follow him but the boy did not and he sobbed and sobbed until she held him again. He was filthy and his hair clung to her cheek like cobwebs. 

"I don't want to go inside."

"Are you scared?"

"Yes."

"This is a good place."

"It used to be you mean."

"Yes, it was. It used to be."

"But not anymore." There was no question in the boy's tone. The girl shook her head.

"I don't know." After a while she stood and the boy decided to wait. A boy so young and lifeless and yet without him clinging to her hand and sticking to her in his sleep she felt alone and unsafe. The dagger on her hip was sheathed. 

Inside the stranger stood in the centre of the room looking up. There was a roof to the Sept but it had some fire damage. The idols were burned to their knees save for The Stranger and the stranger stood beside it and both were hooded. The stranger placed his hand on the finely carved wood and she thought he might be crying. The girl kicked the ash off the floor and beneath were bones and around the ankles of the idols were bones and there might have been candles once too. Paintings were scarred and torched and burned until the faces were warped and terrifying. The Mother was screaming, The Father was angered and The Maid's skirts had been burned and blackened. The Crone's lantern was gone and she looked lost and the girl felt compelled to kneel but as she did so the stranger lifted her up. 

"No." He said, and she nodded. "Where's your boy?"

_He's not mine._ "Outside. He is afraid."

"Good." He started building a fire while the girl picked up the bones and tossed them behind The Warrior who had fallen to lean against The Maiden and so hid the dead people scattered across the floor. Skulls and femurs. Little bones like fingers and bigger ones like ribs. Then she fetched the boy. 

No one ate. No one spoke, and the stranger remaind hooded. The boy fell asleep but shook beneath his cloaks and after a while the girl was forced to hold him and try and soothe him. She pulled on a glove to run a hand through his matted hair and she kissed his cheek and and he shook so much she bit her lip with the effort. She didn't bleed. The stranger sat against The Stranger and that was the last thing she saw before morning.


	4. 4

When she woke she was clutching the boy in her arms and he slept soundly and had stopped shaking about an hour or so before. She did not sit up but from across the burning embers of the fire she could see the stranger. His hood was down and he was laying on his side with his back to her. His hair was black and lank and hung down his back. His breathing would hitch and he coughed in his dreams. Beside him was the sack he carried and the cloth had fallen away to reveal something shiny. She remembered those things and the horses would run and swords would shine in the sunlight. Because sunlight was a thing that was, once.

They did not eat. They walked along the Kingsroad and this time they were side-by-side. The stranger was hooded once more and he walked with a limp. The boy ran his fingers through the mane of his horse and once in a while he would trip over a stone and cry about the holes in his shoes. The girl ignored him and watched the stranger like a hawk. After a while they stopped and the stranger turned.

"I have to go on alone."

"Okay." she said and her fingers twitched. 

"I don't have nothing for you."

"Okay."

"Don't tell me your name." And he stepped forward. The girl reached instinctively for the dagger in its scabbard and she thought she'd unsheathed it but her hand pulled away and it was empty and pressed against the stranger's chest. 

"No!" The little boy was crying and pulling on the stranger's sleeve. With the back of his hand he shoved the boy away and deep within his hood the girl saw his eyes as black as coals and shining. 

"I was a knight once." He said.

"One of the good guys." The girl said. 

"No. Not one of the good guys." He sighed and stepped back. "They don't exist." And he turned and he headed towards the leafless woods and somwhere in the distance they heard the crackle of a fire. The boy was shaking and lay sprawled out on the floor. The girl picked him up but she could not carry him and so they made camp in the middle of the Kingsroad and the boy convulsed until morning. Five days without food.

An overturned cart in the middle of the road. The carcass of an animal at the side and the bones were as white as the boy's eyes. The girl inspected it and there was grain lining the wooden slats. The boy ate them dust and all and she ate those that had sprawled out across the ash-covered ground. Together they lifted the cart and the girl thought together they might be able to pull it along. 

"It's too heavy."

"You can put your horse in there."

"I want to carry my horse."

"You need your hands to push the cart."

"I'm not pushing the cart." The girl had had enough. On her heels she turned and in one motion she had the boy's face cupped in her hands. Tears pricked her eyes. 

"Stop it. Stop it, stop it, stop it."

The boy was crying and shaking and his little fingers danced in her hair and he loved her. "I'm sorry."

"We have to keep going. We have to live. There must always be a..." _Stark in Winterfell._ Spring-warmed walls surrounded her and her skin softened as though a layer of ice melted away and the clean rushes soaked up her pain. "We have to live."

"Aren't we doing that now?"

"No, we're just alive."

"And that's not the same."

"No."

"But you're carrying the fire."

"That doesn't mean I'm alive. It's a burden. Come on." She hadn't realised they had knelt and she pulled the boy to his feet and they put their belongings in the cart and they kept moving. 

The cart wheel rolled ahead of them like a small animal darting from danger and she did not see it stop. The smog as grey as her heart smothered and snatched it away. They had barely moved two miles and the cart had quit. She felt as though she at least had done better than that which its job was to keep going and so as they walked from the cart she felt proud and cold and dead. So very dead. They ate grain for supper and the boy did not shake once. It was even worse because she thought he'd died and so often she had to wake and place her hand on his ribs to feel his chest rise and fall. In her dreams it didn't move and she watched as the grey turned to white and enveloped her in dreams of home and finally, finally she died. It was as beautiful as a kiss and when she woke she imagined it as a gift from the stranger-- her stranger. 

The Kingsroad stretched ahead like a long sigh of a final breath. The girl held the boy's shoulders. He was crying and holding his horse in his shaking hands.

"You don't have to." She said, and kissed his matted hair. The boy stepped forward and crouched and started digging in the dirt. 

"I have to." He was sniffling and choking on his sobs. It was a pretty toy horse.

You can keep it."

"I have to leave it here."

"Are you sure?" The girl asked and the boy laid the horse in the hole in the ground and stroked its mane. Tears splashed on its wooden neck and it was speckled in sadness. 

"We have to keep going. We have to live." He buried to horse and stood. The girl hugged him and told him how brave he was. The boy cried on her shoulder for a while and then he wiped his eyes and looked at her. "I named him Stranger. He will watch over us now." The boy had forgotten what that meant in the old world. The girl hoped he was. "I can help you carry more things." He took a bundle of cloaks from her arm and they carried on walking. The boy didn't talk to himself anymore.


End file.
